Gartner: PC Sales Taking a Hit as Tablet Market Grows

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Led by the Apple iPad, media tablets are drawing consumer

interest, and dollars, away from PCs, forcing

Gartner analysts to lower their projections for 2011 and 2012.

In a March 3 report, Gartner said it now

expects worldwide PC shipments this year to

grow 10.5 percent over 2010 — instead of the 15.9 percent predicted earlier — reaching 387.8 million units in

2011, and by 13.6 percent, versus 14.8 percent, totaling 440.6 million units in

2012.

“We once thought that mobile PC growth would continue to be

sustained by consumers buying second and third mobile PCs as personal devices.

However, we now believe that consumers are not only likely to forgo additional

mobile PC buys but are also likely to extend the lifetimes of the mobile PCs

they retain as they adopt media tablets and other mobile PC alternatives as

their primary mobile device,” Gartner Research Director George Shiffler said in

a statement.

At fault, said Gartner, are a near-term weakness in China’s

mobile PC market (China

is expected to account for the bulk of tablet shipments this year– — 41

percent, compared to just 11 percent by the United

States, according to ABI Research) and the PC industry itself.

While the appeal of mobile PCs has been their portability,

Gartner analysts said, “mainstream mobile

PCs have not shed sufficient weight, and do not offer the all-day battery life

to substantiate their promise of real mobility. These limitations have become

all the more apparent with the rapid spread of social networking, which thrives

on constant and immediate connections. In short, all-day untethered computing

has yet to materialize, and that has exposed the ‘mobile’ PC as merely a

transportable PC at best.”

For more, read the eWeek article: iPad, Other Tablets Will Hurt PC Sales, Gartner Says.

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